The MTA unilaterally declares a holiday

Although it has become somewhat controversial lately, the term “the holidays” has long been used generally to describe the spate of end-of-year celebrations of various kinds. More specifically, arguments over religious precedence aside, it’s traditionally been taken to mean the period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, which are true holidays from work for most people.

A lot of people make it a point to take vacation days during that period; some even take entire weeks at that time of year. But the fact is that, for most working people, most of those days during “the holidays” aren’t holidays at all. Very few, if any, businesses or government operations shut down for that entire time. And so, many, many people must go to work during most of the period called “the holidays,” just as they do during the rest of the year.

Someone ought to let the Metropolitan Transportation Authority know about this phenomenon. This year, the MTA treated those Fridays before Christmas Day and New Year’s Day as if most people had them off.

So many thousands of commuters arrived at their bus stops or train stations on those working Fridays only to discover that the MTA was operating trains and buses on a Saturday schedule. A Saturday schedule may be enough for a normal Saturday, but not for a Friday on which most people have to get to work. And this came on top of a week of nightmare commutes caused by the blizzard for all those who didn’t have time off.

On New Year’s Eve morning, we heard from one exasperated commuter who called us on his cell phone from the Eltingville Transit Center park-and-ride. He complained that there weren’t nearly enough express buses for all the would-be passengers. So all these beleaguered people were stranded in the icy wind for long periods as buses packed to capacity passed them by every half hour or so.

How many other commuters were confronted by this nasty surprise last Friday? And, oh, yeah, the bizarre decision to go to a weekend schedule just happened to coincide with yet another MTA fare hike.

Yes, the MTA posted notice of this schedule change on its Web site, and undoubtedly taped fliers on the windows of the buses and trains, so people who had to get to work last week could have checked.

But in the riders’ defense, the week was rather a hectic one, with a major blizzard bracketed by Christmas and New Year’s. We’d guess that these commuters probably had a lot of other things on their minds on Friday. Since they had to go to work, it probably never dawned on them that, in its wisdom, the MTA had declared those Fridays holidays.

There’s a lesson here for commuters for the future: Check out the MTA’s notices before you go to work on an out-of-the-ordinary day, such as New Year’s Eve. Maybe you can make alternative transportation arrangements.

And for the MTA: The decision to operate trains and buses on a holiday or weekend schedule cannot be arbitrary. The agency simply cannot declare holidays that don’t exist for most of its riders. As our unhappy caller pointed out, on Friday, the markets were up and running, as were all the Wall Street firms that employ so many commuters. It wasn’t a day off for most other businesses either.

So why did the MTA, which should be aware of such factors that affect ridership, act as if it were?